Werner Ruotsalainen is an iOS and Java programming lecturer who is well-versed in programming, hacking, operating systems, and programming languages. Werner tries to generate unique articles on subjects not widely discussed. Some of his articles are highly technical and are intended for other programmers and coders.

Werner also is interested in photography and videography. He is a frequent contributor to not only mobile and computing publications, but also photo and video forums. He loves swimming, skiing, going to the gym, and using his iPads. English is one of several languages he speaks.

With the release of Windows Phone 8 and backed by (at least when it comes to Nokia) truly excellent and unique hardware manufacturers, Microsoft's mobile platform has become really interesting. Therefore, I, a seasoned iOS programmer (and iOS programming lecturer) decided to provide you, preferably an iOS programmer (or at least a geek interested in coding) a long tutorial series specifically tailored for fellow iOS programmers to greatly help getting up to speed with Windows Phone (WP for short) programming.

In the update section of my previous article on advanced location and camera direction tagging of videos, I've already mentioned the built-in video recorder of Ubipix, currently, the only iOS application to record truly dynamic, almost (metadata is sampled every second) frame-level location and direction info, doesn't really have a decent video recorder.

Ever wanted to know whether you can know not only the precise GPS coordinates of something you've shot a video of during travel, but also the direction (based on the internal compass) of the camera while the object was taken a video of? Every wanted to know how this can be done on an iPhone (or any 3G iPad) – or, if you have a non-GPS/compass-equipped external camera, with the help of your iDevice? Read on – this article is for you!

In the first chapter of the article, I explain why you can't do this with Apple's stock Camera app – or for that matter, when compass recording is concerned, any decent(!) standalone camera out there.

I've been asked by several of my readers to post a detailed review of, along with It's Playing and GoodPlayer, the best generic iOS media player, AVPlayer(HD). Below, I provide you with a video / audio / subtitle / container type-dependent list of pros and cons so that you can see whether the player does fulfill your needs or not. While AVPlayer is truly an amazing player, there are some things it's entirely incapable of or where some of the alternatives are considerably better. It's based on this list that you will want to decide whether the player is for you or not, at least when it comes playing back some specific multimedia formats.

Being a video format / playback / encoding pro, I've been asked by the RockPlayer2 developers to post an honest review of their new app now that they've fixed some of the bugs and problems I've pointed out in the previous review. Here it is.

(The AppStore update list; as with all the images in this article, click for a larger, better-quality version)

It took more than three months for AVPlayer(HD), one of the best iOS multimedia players (iPhone / iPad versions), to reenter the App Store. My previous, dedicated article (with more than 16,000 shares) is HERE. Now it's back -- and with official AC-3 support!

If you have ever purchased a movie (TV show etc.) from the iTunes Store, you may already have noticed it has some additional metadata (description, staff listing etc.) nicely rendered in the desktop iTunes:

(desktop iTunes, Men in Black. As with all the images in this article, click the thumbnail for the original, high-quality image.)

Over at MacRumors (thread), I've been asked to compile a list of players that can vertically stretch a video so that it entirely fills the iPad's screen. During this, it does sacrifice the right aspect ratio and does distort the image. However, at least it doesn't cut off the sides.

yaPlayer (AppStore link), an absolutely stunning excellent video player when it comes to H.264 and MPEG-2 playback (main review; last piece of news), has just become free – along with some new features and bugfixes. Now, there is no point in NOT downloading it – after all, what can you lose? It won't cost you anything.

With Google's own YouTube client, the biggest problem has always been the lack of Closed Caption (CC; a.k.a. subtitle) support. It was in no way possible to display subtitles in a video, not even in the latest iOS version (still) having the client built-in. Not so with the recently-released, updated, iPad- and widescreen-friendly, free(!!) YouTube client (AppStore link), which shows a CC icon, making it possible to activate CC's, in Landscape orientation on all models and Portrait orientation on iPads: